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A new poll suggests that Arizona Republicans opposing a new national monument around Grand Canyon may be in the minority, even within their party.

The results were released Thursday, only a day after a committee in the state House of Representatives voted to fight the plan.

Eighty percent of likely 2016 Arizona voters approve of a statewide plan for a Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument exceeding 1 million acres and banning new uranium mines, according to the poll sanctioned by the Grand Canyon Trust.

The support included 95 percent of Democrats polled, 84 percent of independents and 65 percent of Republicans. More than half — 58 percent — of the respondents said they "strongly" support a monument

U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., has proposed a bill to create a 1.7 million-acre Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument that would make permanent a federal moratorium on new uranium claims on either side of Grand Canyon National Park. The monument would cover much of the Kaibab National Forest and the Kaibab Plateau.

Grijalva, though, said his bill guarantees both continued forestry and hunting access.

"We have strong support from hunters and anglers," he said, noting that 76 percent of poll respondents who identified themselves that way supported the plan. "We can begin to put aside the shrill debate that will occur on this issue."

But Wednesday, the Arizona House Committee on Federalism and States' Rights advanced a bill meant to restrict the size of the monument if it is approved. HB2585, sponsored by Rep. Bob Thorpe, R-Flagstaff, targets a presidential designation of the monument — a route to preservation that many supporters consider likelier than Grijalva's bill, given Republican opposition.

Thorpe's bill would require a state commission to review any designated monument to ensure it covers the least amount of acreage needed to protect individual resources, as he says the 1906 Antiquities Act demands. If the commission found that more lands were included than necessary, then the state attorney general would be required to act to block the monument's designation.

"There's no public input," Thorpe complained in committee. "This is a stroke of the pen by the president, and then all the sudden a huge chunk of our state is off-limits."

Sierra Club representative Sandy Bahr told the committee that no state commission could pin down the resources to be protected or their minimum required acreage.

"I'm not sure how you'd have GPS coordinates on a California condor or a bighorn sheep," Bahr said.

The committee forwarded the bill on a 5-3 vote, with Democrats opposing.

Presidents have successfully set aside massive monuments for more than a century, going back to the one that would become Grand Canyon National Park. Grijalva said Arizona legislators' efforts were pointless.

"The Antiquities Act is a federal law," he said. "That has been challenged in the past and has survived those challenges."